By Rachel Royster | News Editor
This week, there have been tons of new faces across campus curious about what coming to Baylor might be like. Some are even visiting for the first time since getting their acceptance letters. One thing that isn’t talked about on tours, though, is an opportunity to have more meaningful conversations and have a deeper understanding of yourself alongside peers with a similar intellectual curiosity through the Baylor Interdisciplinary Core.
The BIC is a sector of the Honors College that replaces your typical general education courses. It’s a two-and-a-half-year track with classes that build on each other to create a unique look at different areas of the human experience.
The thing that truly sets the BIC apart from the rest of your classes is the intentionality of your professors and the community created in each cohort (the other people in your year in the BIC). For example, a group of BIC professors put together an extra outlet just for students to get together and talk about the hardships they’re facing because of COVID-19 — solely made to make sure BIC students knew that whatever they were going through, they weren’t alone and were entitled to feel the way they did.
By joining, you can also have much more intriguing conversations looking at life in a brand new way. I’ve had classes debating social experiments and how to convince someone of your argument in the most successful way.
In the BIC, I’ve never had to sit in a class of 300 people and feel like no one knows who I am. The BIC is put together in such a way that you are part of a small group of between 15-30 people to talk about the large-group lectures that take place when the entire cohort gets together. Because of this, every one of my professors has known my name and seen my personal growth in the class; this seems like a small thing, but gen-ed professors couldn’t honestly say they know the name of every person in their lecture hall. I know the people in my classes and get to see the same faces throughout every BIC course I take, creating a sense of family.
The BIC is also made up of people from all different majors, backgrounds and ethnicities. I’ve learned so much about what other people’s experiences are like simply due to how they identify. This diversity isn’t common at Baylor, but in the BIC, it is celebrated and more common than in the average classroom.
So as you’re going through the Baylor acceptance process, don’t just glaze over the Baylor Interdisciplinary Core; apply to join a family that reflects your curiosity about the world.
